When it comes to dealing with services for people with disabilities, British Columbia has no coherent policy.

If you needed to learn how to deal with a spinal cord injury, G. F. Strong Hospital would be there for you. If you had a developmental disability, you could go to Community Living. Even though there have been problems and questions concerning that program, everyone accepts that the ultimate responsibility for its success lies with the province. If you are a blind adult, where would you go for intensive immersion training in essential blindness skills? Currently, in British Columbia, the sad answer is nowhere.

What services do blind people need and what should blind individuals gain from a good training program? That depends. No matter what your age or circumstances, you should at least be able to count on services that will allow you to restore your confidence and to continue living the life you led before becoming blind. That will mean one thing for an eighty-year-old retiree whose main objective is to remain at home and avoid institutionalization; training will mean something quite different for a person seeking a career.

The retiree with limited goals can get by with home visits from rehabilitation teachers coupled with support group sessions. The retiree shouldn’t have to settle for so little, but most eighty-year-old people don’t face the economic necessity of finding work. At eighty, they’ve earned the right to choose the level of intensity they prefer when learning to deal with blindness.

People of working age don’t have that luxury. They have careers to build, families to support, dreams to bring into reality. In the Canadian Federation of the Blind, we are raising expectations among blind people. We believe in a “no limits, no excuses” philosophy that says blindness does not need to be a severe handicap, depending on attitude, skill level, and opportunity. Good training deals with all three components. A first class training program teaches essential skills like Braille, home management, computer use, independent travel with the long white cane. If it only teaches skills, it will fail. A successful program continuously exposes students to situations and activities that challenge old assumptions about the limits blindness imposes. Students learn to use power tools, go rock climbing and water skiing, prepare a meal for forty, find their way independently to places they’ve never been before, volunteer at a local school or day care or food bank. People who have been over protected are placed in a situation where they are expected to carry their own groceries, to carry their own weight.

Why isn’t British Columbia funding training in essential blindness skills? Because most people believe CNIB is already doing the job. CNIB does not operate an intensive blindness immersion program. They have teachers, social workers, and support groups, programs tailor made for retirees with vision loss. Comparing what CNIB does with full blindness immersion training centers is like comparing tutoring with a full university program. Both have value, but they’re not interchangeable.

The sister organization of the Canadian Federation of the Blind, the National Federation of the Blind in the United States, operates three highly successful world-renowned blindness immersion centres: Blind Inc. in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Louisiana Center for the Blind in Ruston, Louisiana; and Colorado Center for the Blind in Littleton, Colorado.

British Columbia should be offering this type of essential blindness skills and attitude immersion training. Until we can do that, we should fund individuals to go where the training exists.

We know individuals who have expressed a desire for intense immersion training. Without intense training, it’s likely that they will remain on public assistance their entire lives! That’s thirty years or more of welfare benefits. If the province pays a person $908 per month for the next thirty years, British Columbia will spend $326,880 to encourage lives of lack and limitation. If the province spends forty thousand dollars on training, that cost will be recovered by the time the trainee has spent just 38 months in the work force and off of public assistance. Over the next thirty years, the net savings to British Columbia for providing intensive blindness immersion training and the skills leading to employment amounts to $286,880. That’s not even considering the human cost of doing nothing or the humanity of assisting people to use their potential.

Recommendation:

The Government of British Columbia needs to include funding of blindness immersion training as part of the mandate for Work BC. We estimate that expanding the mandate will cost less than $200,000 per year, since we estimate that five people a year (or fewer) will participate.

Rehabilitation is a right, it is a necessity, and it is the only humane answer to the problems faced by blind British Columbians.

Position Statement of the Canadian Federation of the Blind Concerning Rehabilitation of Blind Canadians

(Note: The term “blind” in this document refers to all individuals who meet the legal definition of blindness.)

1. Blind Canadians have the right to the opportunity to learn the skills and attitudes of blindness necessary to succeed economically and socially. Because the opportunity to learn these skills is a right, it must be provided at government expense. Just as the right to a free and public education exists for all Canadian children, the right to rehabilitation must be provided to blind adults.

2. Blind Canadians are not a homogeneous group. Therefore, it is appropriate that a variety of rehabilitation options be available to meet varying needs.

3. Individuals seeking rehabilitation have the right to informed consent when choosing the type of services that best fit their needs.

4. Funding for rehabilitation should follow the individual, not the program.

5. An Individualized Written Rehabilitation Plan, specifying the type of training to be provided, the responsibilities of the entity providing the training, the government funding it, and the rehabilitation student, and the expected outcomes must be drawn up and agreed to jointly by the government, the blind individual, and the service provider.

6. Evaluation of contracts for rehabilitation will be based on the outcomes for the students, not merely on the contractor’s provision of services.

7. Students may not be geographically limited in their choice of training options; those choosing training out of province or in another country will continue to receive medical coverage and other public benefits while participating in the training course.

British Columbia is squandering a valuable resource when it fails to maximize the independence and skills of its blind citizens by refusing to provide them with quality rehabilitation services. The Canadian Federation of the Blind calls upon our government to begin constructive change by pursuing the simple initiative we recommend.